


There are things a man must not do

by gresniandjeo29



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - A Song of Ice and Fire, Alternate Universe - Game of Thrones Fusion, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Game of Thrones References
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-17
Updated: 2016-01-18
Packaged: 2018-03-04 15:37:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3073202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gresniandjeo29/pseuds/gresniandjeo29
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I'm not really sure where I'm taking this one yet. It may be a collection of POVs, both from Arya and Jaqen or it may be only Jaqen. For now it is a one shot, but I may add to it in order to spin it off of my other GoT fan fiction, "And now for something completely different".  Anyway, here it is in its current state. I own nothing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

A man glides across a floor, once polished and immaculate; a floor where anyone of any age, race or station could come to find the refuge of drink and sleep. _This temple offered mercy to the living and care to the dead._ His step is light and soundless. He moves without slipping in the copper scented ooze that threatens to cover the surface completely. He has done all that he can and so much more than he ought, but his labor--his trial is not done. He has traveled swiftly and by night with a final offering to add to the collection. There remains only one more thing that he can offer to his God...the Red God. _The God a man has betrayed._

 

He knows of no precedent for this. Nothing was passed from the masters before him. Had none of them transgressed in this manner? No one would ever know. He would be the last of his kind. He had used reason and a trick taught to him by a beautiful boy--not a boy-- a girl-child masquerading. He sighs as his tongue and fingertips heat and remember. _A child no longer..._

 

He kneels silently in his usual robes, his plain, kindly, and older face reflected back at him in the pool. He watches his face change as he rewinds through a catalog of masks he has worn, traveling back through the years he has forgotten until he returns to the one which began it all; the red hair streaked with white, the handsome face of the one she calls "Jaqen". Bending forward from the waist, he bows to his God, dipping a fine bowl into the pool. He raises it to his forehead, then his lips, swallowing the entirety of it without haste and without hesitation. It does not taste as he expected. It tastes of lips, kisses, skin and sweet things. It smells of fires, wine and the end of a long summer. He feels its effect taking hold. His dream begins as he topples into the pool.

 

The splash causes ripples to slap and slosh over the pool's lip. The dark swirling liquid weeps to mingle with the heavy, ruddy wet on the floor. The temple is empty of any caretakers and silent expect for the lapping waters...but the litter of bodies lies in a thick, interwoven carpet from wall to wall.


	2. Chapter 2

_This girl...this woman..._

 

"A girl is too beautiful," his voice was quiet, the florid accent tinting the words with a foreign musicality. The room was small and dark, the last at the end of a hall on the back of a public house. The general din of music on poor instruments and the bustle of lust linked commerce filtered up from below. He did not need light and sound evidence she did not provide. _Silent as a cat as it pleases a girl...and as loud as one in heat, if a man pleases a girl._

 

He could be silent too, not a single creaking floorboard would announce him. He sensed that they were stalking each other, two clever beasts of prey. She was an excellent pupil, but a pupil still. He found hands in the pitch of the room, tenderly tracing fingers with fingers; then wrists, the delicate skin of her inner arms, sinewy muscles, shoulders, neck. He knew every inch from memory and she never changed for him, though she could have at any time without earning complaint from him. He did not know whether this pleased or displeased the Red God, but he liked the original best.

 

It was rare that he saw her now. They met like this most frequently. The meetings seemed random, but they were not. They had a pattern, flowing and abstract to another's eye, but the pattern had a rhythm that seemed to beat in their veins. And his hands and lips did not forget her. She was slimmer than most men liked, her face was long, narrow and refined. Her brown hair was thick and heavy, often corded into a long braid. His fingers found delicate straps that indicated a plain shift. His eyes remembered hers looking at him as she stood in it the first time. Unlike their usual northern gray, they had been nearly black with untapped passion. His fingers roam lightly teasing both skin and straps. Her breath catches, his ears train on the source. Instantly and flawlessly his mouth captures her open lips, covering them with warmth and longing. He is always wearing a different face, but he knows that it doesn't matter. She always knows him. He doesn't know how, but she seems to see him in a way that only his God can. He cannot tell if this is for good or for ill, but he knows it is exceptional and important. And he finds her again and again.

 

She is trying to show restraint. She does not grab him or press into him. He twists the strips of material in between his fingers before dragging them from her shoulders, the humble garment trailing down skin he knows and wants too well, catching on nipples hardened by the room's chill. Her breath catches again, and he leans deeper into the kiss. His fingers are tracing every line of a silhouette that is more a home or shrine to him than a body. He has worshiped and found home in her many times, and he has counted every one. He breaks away from the kiss.

 

"A man travels far and sees many things, but a girl is never far from his mind." He obeys his God. _So does she, inasmuch as she can._ There are still traces of Arya about her. It is the difficulty of no one who was once someone. And yet it is true. He sees many things, but she is always there, and he looks ever forward to the next beat of the muscled organ in his chest that will find them together like this. His voice drops when his hand finds her sex hot and wet with want. "A man knows he will always find a girl."

 

Her knees are trembling as his hands explore her arousal. She cannot wait much longer, she begins to undress him. He hopes she finds the form pleasing. His eyes have adjusted to the darkness and he realizes that there is little to recommend the palette on the floor, so he guides her to a small table. It doesn't take much, she follows his energy like a dancer. There he leans her back, taking time to linger over her with his lips and tongue, while his fingers remain employed by her cleft. Her breasts are small, but in perfect harmony with her physique, her nipples pronouced and attractive. She is trying to bite back her cries, but they begin to escape her, filling the air and his ears with lust.

 

His lust for her is not simple. This is known to him. It had begun before it began, with a beautiful child disguised to all but him...a child he could not refuse. He gave her the coin, the words, and a chance. He left the rest up to his God. One day a beautiful ragged child arrived at a temple to begin a journey of service. The beautiful girl was small, scrawny and stubborn but clever; and in time--after some years, he was able to train her for the Red God. So many names for one so young...her voice was resounding around him now. He pushes her and the table with her up against a wall. Seizing her by her hips he flips her over, planting her feet on the ground encouraging her to lean on the table before he fills her with his eager organ from behind, using one long full stroke. In that instant her cries come to life, singing out with every stroke. He is slow, smooth and strong. _A girl is so full of needs. Hers is a hunger a man must slake._ She has braced herself with her hands against the wall. Sometimes he pauses to toy with the button of nerves crowning her sex. She twists and grinds back against him when he does. When she begins to moan with frustration at his pauses, he begins to fill her more in his own need than before, sliding ever deeper into her core. He drives her through pleasures that see her moaning, nearly sobbing for joy. The sound is compelling. _A man has needs...but a man also has many things he may not do._

 

She has been satisfied for now, of this he is certain. He pulls her from the table and she falls on her knees. She understands immediately. She pulls him deep into her throat, sucking in tandem with the added stimulation of her right hand gripping and pulling. He explodes seeing stars as she drinks his pleasure. _A girl must not know what she does to a man._ They are no one. No one. They may not want or plan. They owe their power and existence to the Red God and they must serve. He has pulled her up from her knees to lie back on the table and his tongue is licking between her legs. She is wet again and weeping her ecstacy. He will be ready again soon and there is much more that he must do and be gone before first light.


	3. Chapter 3

_A girl is stubborn._ " Who are you?" he asks as he asks every time she returns to the temple.

 

"I am no one," the child answers, her face is almost perfectly neutral but her eyes are defiant.

 

The people in the streets do not notice her, she is able to fool those who see but never look. She thinks this is enough. She does not understand. Power comes at a sacrifice.

 

"You lie." He says, bluntly. "You are Arya Stark."

 

"I am no one!" she raises her voice. It is colored at its edge with a warm, pink petulance.

 

"Enough. Go. You are not meant to serve here in the Temple of Black and White. You are not meant to serve the Red God." He does not understand the disappointment he feels at saying this, but the truth is simple. She will not make the sacrifice that is necessary and he is at an end of what he can teach. _Beautiful girl._ Her face has fallen and her eyes defy Him still.

 

A man has no illusions. He is a man, but as a man he is no one. He has lost track of time, years pass without any memory of who or where he came from. He cannot claim origin, race or age. There is only birth before a void. A man serves and all men must die. He does not know when his time will come. For now, he serves in the temple. In times of need, he serves in the world. It was in the world that he found her. _A girl is stubborn._ He feels himself sigh. _A girl also has potential._

 

She has learned a certain invisibility. She learns things easily. She is quick, she lives without complaint through relative hardship, she is comfortable with killing and death... _and her list is long, very long indeed._ She has much to offer and much to gain from the Red God, if only she would learn to serve. _But a Stark cannot serve._ She wants the power to wreak horrible vengeance upon those who wronged her family. This is a normal, human conclusion. It is not only herself that she must offer up to his God, but also that vengeance. The Red God would arm her to the teeth and no one on her list could be safe once marked for His consumption. But without Arya Stark, there would be no need for vengeance. He wonders if she knows this. Is it the reason she remains intractible? Sending her away now is not a risk because there is no loss or gain in the equation. She can become something else, someone else. She can even have what she desires, but not through his discipline. His discipline requires faith.

 

For him, belief is easy. He can be any face of any age. He can be handsome or horrible or invisibly plain. He is deadly in any and every situation. He is skilled with weapons, stealth, potion and poison. But every one of his advantages came from the depth that he surrendered. Every life taken was another memory shed. Each face worn he will never wear again, with this one exception. In the Temple, he wears the same face always. It is also not his own. It is the face of the one who came before him, who took it from the one before him, who took it from the one before him and so on. No one knows to whom the face belonged, but it serves as a uniform. He is the master of the art and the faith and the technique. He is aware of his God as a common reality.

 

But she is identified by many things, her family most of all. She is identified by rank. This too, is a priviledge few are able to surrender. It is difficult to be no one, when your life has been spent not only as someone, but as someone who is more important than others. She is a child. He knows this. Children are always bargaining, always trying to get something for nothing. She has learned that many things are costly, but she has not yet understood that everyone pays. It troubles him that she lies. She told him that she threw her Needle into the sea, but he knows where it lies, waiting for Arya Stark to come to claim it once more. There would be more room for instruction if she told the truth, but she denies and defies. He wonders how a child came to be so manipulative. Then he recalls that a girl always was... _lovely girl_.


	4. Chapter 4

His eyes turn dark in his head, the pitch of his voice drops. "A girl has no honor." She taunts him and she is right. He has given his word and a third is marked for his God. All men must serve, all men must die, and he is only a man. "Unname me." She asks more lives. More lives, he can give. He is unnamed. _Clever girl. Lovely girl._

 

He gave many lives that day. He considers the memory in the dust of morning. He does not dream and he hardly sleeps. She is still a student. Her body demands sleep, her mind records and fabricates dreams. There is much she does not know. But she recognizes a man. Only one face remains separating them. Can that be because she has come to recognize some truth of their practice? Or is it rather that he is losing his no-one-ness? T _hat must not be._ He considers, as he always has, that he should stay away. _One day, one day she may be able to see a man._ She knows him in most skins, but this last is heavily cloaked, veiled by his God's favor. _The Red God indulges a man in many ways_. Affairs are not inherently prohibited, but fraught with pitfalls and curses. There are a thousand ways to fail one's God. _A girl only seeks to multiply that number._

 

In these years, a girl has learned to change face. She has learned to be many, but never no one. She is often someone else in the common room of an inn, but never when they are together and alone. This is part of her burden. She believes that her face and form are dear to him, and they are. This is a failing that concerns him. Her face and form are dear beyond their actual worth. It should not matter. For he, too, would know her anywhere, but still she offers him Arya, a gift he never refuses. She offers him his lovely girl, never understanding. Even with a man who is no one, she still breathes the name "Jaqen", she still believes the myth of "Arya". And it is something he cannot explain; neither as lover, nor as teacher. _Or it is that has a man lost his way?_ That too, must not be. He must find some way to show her the truth or he is no master. In the meantime, he must keep the balance and navigate them safely on.

 

He smells the heat of the day. It is still dark without, but the ovens are fired and first bread will soon be baking. The smell will raise the other tennants. He must make his mark silently and retire this face. A girl sleeps on the dingy hay stuffed mattress occasionally scratching her skin as she is bitten by fleas. He has been bitten himself. The one who must die lodges on the ground floor and it is time he slipped out of this room. Dawn is creeping towards the horizon. This is the longest he has stayed and he has stayed for the view. He does not wonder on what it would be like to pass a night wrapped around her, to wake her in the morning with his lips to greet the sun. He does not wonder over what may not be. He steels downstairs and two fingers in the right place are all it takes. Service calls him on. _A man will meet a girl in the Temple of Black and White._


	5. Chapter 5

_A man has traveled...far, very far._ He cannot guess how long is has been since he breathed. His drenched robes weigh heavily from his frame. The frame is young and strong; it can carry the burden and maintain a certain grace. It seems that he has been walking for a long time, through corridors and stairways. The stairs only lead downwards, deeper and deeper beneath the earth. Walls drip onto worn and slick steps. There is always the same level of light regardless of the depth. He is not surprised. There is no way back up. All men must serve, all men must die.

 

He stops at a landing to rest. He knows that the need for respite is illusory. His mind is collapsing within his body somewhere above, so it summons the energy to continue on. He sits on a step and soon sleeps. _Dreams within dreams._ A man has traveled far, but has much farther to go. He wakes in the north. _The Red God intends to reveal a man's mistakes._

 

He recalls everything perfectly. He wanders the lands of Winterfell in the skin and garments he wore, then. He had released the lovely girl from the temple for a second time, just after she had gained her first faces. _A girl is stubborn...and rash._ But a girl was a servant of the Red God, not a prisoner. She wished to spend his God's gifts on her vengeance and so she had quit the temple. But in her vengeance she was denied, because the world had moved on and changed without her. A man she would kill was now her sister's chosen mate. He looks at the alien trees, full of red leaves and sap. _The first misstep was this one. A man should never have followed._

 

The ceremony was there, among those trees. A man knew of such things, though they were rarely witnessed through his duties. The lovely girl had a lovely sister, and the sister married a dog of a man, a beast by looks. _Though not a beast at all...a man marked, but a man._ There was a different standard of honor carried by the barely willing hulk of a man; honor was honor, still. _This man has served, he has offered a great many lives..._ The Hound, a name from the lovely girl's list, a name denied. A man wonders to himself as he observes the throng of unknowns, if the sister would not have a better temperment for service to the Temple of Black and White. She sees things his lovely girl cannot and she is without guile. He knows it matters not and that he risks much by following.

 

He eats in a rich hall, he observes the northern customs, he watches the bride and groom exit the hall for their first night of love. He knows it is not an ideal that has been maintained, simply reality. He slips away in the shadows, grabbing a strange hand to pull the body and face that go with it. It is a night for love. He has risked much and will not waste the rewards. There are many passages that a girl knows. She pulls him from one to another until they are within a barred room. It is clean, bright and warm. It is in every way different from any place in which they meet. It is not overly grand, nor overly feminine. He guesses it once lodged a brother. _This was the mistake_. A man hoped the change in her family would allow her to abandon her vendetta. _But a man should not hope._ Time had proved his hope ill-founded, but hope itself was transgression enough.


End file.
